Henry III Fine Rolls: Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Petition of the Barons’

In this week Henry completed the tour we discussed in the blog for last week. On Saturday 11 March he began the day with his half brother, William de Valence, at Hertford, and then moved on to Waltham abbey. He remained there till 14 or 15 March when he returned to Westminster for the great parliament which was to open on the eighteenth. In terms of fine roll business, indeed of all business, this seems a very quiet week. Indeed, only three items of fine roll business are dated to it. One suspects that everything was hanging fire till the parliament and that those wishing to make fines with the king, that is offer money to him for concessions and favours, had decided to wait until he returned to Westminster. It may be remembered that last week when the masters of Oxford University came before the king at St Albans, he referred them to the forthcoming parliament. It will be interesting to see if business does indeed pick up next week.

In one of the fines of this week, made at Waltham on Tuesday 13 March, Hugh de Dyve offered half a mark of gold ‘for quittance of assizes’ , which meant he was freed from having to appear on juries. The concession was embodied in a letter patent witnessed by the king at Waltham on the following day. Henry III made a good deal of money from selling such exemptions and they made a significant contribution to his gold treasure. They were, however, unpopular, and indeed featured in the ‘the Petition of the Barons’, presented at the revolutionary Oxford parliament in 1258. It was there claimed that, as a result of the king granting such quittances, so many knights were free from appearing on grand assize juries (which had to be composed entirely of knights) that it was impossible to assemble them. Today one suspects that a good deal of money could likewise be raised by selling exemptions from jury service, with much the same damage to the legal processes.

For the selling of exemptions from jury service see a famous article by Scott Waugh ‘Reluctant knights and jurors: respites, exemptions and public obligations in the reign of Henry III’, Speculum, 58 (1983), 937-86.

One footnote. It will be noticed that now we have passed the leap year of 2012, the calendar is exactly the same in 1257 as in 2012.